Los Angeles, February 9
Beyonce captured a record-tying five Grammys for her solo debut album “Dangerously in Love,” while Justin Timberlake had two and apologised for his role in the Janet Jackson’s racy performance at last week’s Super Bowl.

Musharraf defends decision to pardon Abdul Qadeer Khan
Washington, February 9
Defending his decision to pardon the country’s top scientist involved in proliferation of nuclear technology, Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf has said he faced a dilemma while taking this stand as the father of the country’s nuclear bomb was a “national hero” who had done something which could bring “harm” to the nation.

US strikes deal with Pak over
N-row: analystsWashington, February 9
The Bush Administration is sweeping the issue of Pakistan’s nuclear scandal under the rug after having struck a deal with President Pervez Musharraf to pursue Al-Qaida forces inside Pakistan, US geopolitical analysts have said.

Weapon blueprints in Libya crude,
say expertsNew York, February 9
Investigators have determined that the nuclear weapon blueprints found in Libya from the Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan were of his own relatively crude type of bomb, not the more advanced models that Pakistan developed and successfully tested, a media report said today quoting American and European arms experts.

A soldier stands in front of a departing train on the platform of the Avtozavodskaya metro station in Moscow
on Monday. The Russian capital on Monday observed a day of mourning for
the victims of Friday's metro blast, backed up with a heavy police presence on the streets.
— Reuters

Tigers vow to uphold truceColombo, February 9
Sri Lanka’s Tamil rebels today vowed to uphold their truce with government troops despite the dissolution of Parliament but said the snap poll called by the President were a “grave setback” to peace efforts.

Another bird flu death reportedHanoi, February 9
A 27-year-old man has died of bird flu in Vietnam, taking Asia’s toll from the virus to 19, a medical official said today.
The latest victim was from southern Binh Phuoc province. In addition, a 23 year-old man from the Central Highlands has tested positive for the H5N1 strain of the virus but is still alive, the official from the Pasteur Institute in Ho Chi Minh City said.

Bali bombing suspect jailed for lifeBali, Indonesia, February 9
An Indonesian court sentenced a Muslim militant to life in jail today for helping make the bombs that tore through two Bali nightclubs in October 2002 killing 202 persons.
“The panel of judges declare the defendant, Suranto Abdul Ghoni, is legally and convincingly proven guilty of acts of terror,” said presiding judge Made Sudia.

Tibetan lama ‘sentenced to death in China’New York, February 9
The Chinese government has sentenced a highly respected and prominent Tibetan lama to death in a closed trial on charges he was involved in a bombing in a public park, a leading human rights group reported.

Kerry keeps Bush on tenterhooksWashington, February 9
Democratic presidential front-runner John Kerry scored an easy win in Maine to expand his huge lead in the party’s nomination fight. Thus, he kept the heat on President George W. Bush by questioning his justification for war in Iraq.

Israel to take part in India’s moon missionJerusalem, February 9
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has approved his country’s participation in India’s moon mission - Chandrayaan I.
“The Prime Minister has expressed keen interest in the mission giving his go-ahead. He has asked the ministry to provide him with further details, exploring the possible areas of cooperation, appreciating India’s initiative and its recent successes in this field”, a spokesperson for the Ministry of Science and Technology, Michal Ogolnik, said.

Los Angeles, February 9
Beyonce captured a record-tying five Grammys for her solo debut album “Dangerously in Love,” while Justin Timberlake had two and apologised for his role in the Janet Jackson’s racy performance at last week’s Super Bowl.

“I know it’s been a rough week on everybody,” said Timberlake, stifling a self-deprecating laugh while accepting the award for best male pop vocal performance for “Cry me a River.” He brought his mother as his date.

“What occurred was unintentional, completely regrettable, and I apologise if anyone was offended,” he said, adding: “This is officially the greatest moment of my life.’’

The 46th annual awards show began at with Prince performing “Purple Rain,” marking the 20th year of the groundbreaking song and movie.

Beyonce, wearing a tight dress with a feather skirt, joined Prince on his hits and then sang her own “Crazy in Love,” which won two trophies best R&B song and best rap/sung collaboration. Her boyfriend, Jay-Z, also won two awards for collaborating on the hit.

Beyonce also won best female R&B performance for “Dangerously in Love,” best contemporary R&B album for “Dangerously in Love” and best R&B performance by a duo or group with vocals for “The Closer I get to You,” a remake she did with Luther Vandross.

Her five trophies tied a record set by Alicia Keys, Norah Jones and Lauryn Hill for the most Grammys won by a female artist.

Vandross, who suffered a debitating stroke last year, also won two other awards: best male R&B vocal performance for “Dance with my Father,” and best R&B album for “Dance with my Father.” Vandross is still recovering and was not well enough to attend.

OutKast, nominated for a leading six Grammys, had won two awards an hour into the broadcast: best urban/alternative performance for “Hey Ya!” and best rap album for “Speakerboxxx-The Love Below.”

Other multiple winners included Jack White of The White Stripes and Eminem, with two each, and bluegrass singer Alison Krauss, who had three.

Pharrell Williams, who along with Jay-Z and OutKast also had six nominations, won his first Grammy during the pre-telecast ceremony for his production work with Chad Hugo as white-hot hitmakers The Neptunes. They have produced songs for artists ranging from Justin Timberlake to Jay-Z in 2003 alone.

The late country music legend Johnny Cash, and director Mark Romanek, won for best short form music video for the haunting song “Hurt.” Cash’s wife, who died a few months before him in 2003, won best traditional folk album for the posthumous release “Wildwood Flower.”

Another posthumous winner was Warren Zevon, who died of lung cancer just days after the release of his disc “The Wind,” which won best contemporary folk album. It was his first Grammy.
— AP

Washington, February 9
Defending his decision to pardon the country’s top scientist involved in proliferation of nuclear technology, Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf has said he faced a dilemma while taking this stand as the father of the country’s nuclear bomb was a “national hero” who had done something which could bring “harm” to the nation.

Responding to questions by NBC correspondent that the pardon he granted to Abdul Qadeer Khan following his confession that he had leaked nuclear secrets to Libya, North Korea and Iran as head of Pakistan’s nuclear programme from the 1970s, was a complete “whitewash”, Musharraf said he disagreed with it completely.

“I disagree with it absolutely. One must understand reality. There’s an international perception. There’s a domestic perception,” he said.

“There’s a person involved who’s a hero because of what he’s done for us. He’s hero — he was a hero even for me. And here’s a person who’s brought the deterrence - given us deterrence, potential in the unconventional field. So this certainly is - is a very, very sensitive issue.

“Now he did something that could hurt the nation. I was in a dilemma, certainly. The dilemma is: he’s a great man, he’s a hero and he’s a hero of every individual on the street. Yet he has done something which could bring harm to the nation. Now how to deal with it? We had to handle it very carefully”, he told NBC in an interview from Islamabad.

On Afghanistan, President Musharraf said he would support the deployment of US troops near the Pakistani border to turn up pressure on Al Qaida but stressed the American forces hunting Al Qaida and Taliban fighters will not be allowed to cross into Pakistan.

“I have been all along saying that there’s a vacuum in Afghanistan which we have to fill in the countryside,” he said, adding “so I’m for increasing strength there.”

US troops are not needed in Pakistan’s side of the border because Al Qaida members hiding there “are not in such strength that a whole operation, a massive operation has to be launched,” he said.

“And we have developed a very effective, quick reaction force,” President Musharraf claimed, adding “so that is what is required and we are capable of doing all of that.”
— PTI

Washington, February 9
The Bush Administration is sweeping the issue of Pakistan’s nuclear scandal under the rug after having struck a deal with President Pervez Musharraf to pursue Al-Qaida forces inside Pakistan, US geopolitical analysts have said.

Referring to the confession and subsequent pardon of Pakistan nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer, analysts at Strategic Forecasting (Stratfor) said the statements of International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohammed ElBaradei ‘’flagrantly contradict’’ the official lines from both Islamabad and Washington.

Speaking a day after Dr Khan confessed sole responsibility for selling nuclear secrets to Iran, Libya and North Korea, ElBaradei told reporters that “Dr Khan is the tip of an iceberg for us,’’ adding that the scientist ‘’was not working alone.’’

Pakistan and the USA are seeking to make the case that Pakistan has caught the culprit in its nuclear proliferation scandal and the case was therefore closed, Stratfor said.

“More bizarre than this response is that, in Pakistan’s case, the USA and the IAEA are responding to nuclear proliferation exactly opposite the way they did in Iraq.’’

About Iraq, Washington continues to allege that former President Saddam Hussein’s regime possessed weapons of mass destruction that posed the threat of proliferation, despite the Bush administration’s current embarrassment, with no weapons having been discovered nearly a year after Hussein’s ouster.

In this case, the USA was bitterly at odds with the findings of the IAEA, which refused to support the Bush administration’s WMD claims in the lead-up to the 2003 Iraq war, Stratfor pointed out.

In contrast, it said, the USA has not only proof of proliferation coming from Pakistan, but a confession. Instead of pursuing the issue, Washington — in cooperation with Islamabad — is sweeping the issue under the rug.

Stratfor’s said its take was that the Bush administration had struck a deal with Musharraf to pursue Al-Qaida forces within Pakistan, perhaps as early as this spring.

“However, in Musharraf’s haste to limit the fallout from the crisis — Khan is well-respected throughout Pakistan and as of February 4 was threatening to expose military leaders aware of the technology transfers — he has instead turned the issue into something of a farce.’’

Dr Khan’s pardon came mere hours after his confession, and it now is quite obvious that both the USA and President Musharraf considered the issue volatile enough to threaten the Pakistani Government, Stratfor analysts said.

Meanwhile, an AFP report from Islamabad, said that the Pakistan military authorities today rejected a US media report that the USA was involved in safeguarding Pakistan’s nuclear technology from falling into the hands of extremists.

It is “totally baseless,” a military spokesman said.

“Pakistan is a responsible nuclear state and is fully capable for defending its assets without any outside help,” he said in a statement.
— UNI

New York, February 9
Investigators have determined that the nuclear weapon blueprints found in Libya from the Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan were of his own relatively crude type of bomb, not the more advanced models that Pakistan developed and successfully tested, a media report said today quoting American and European arms experts.

The analysis of the blueprints, which establish a new link between Khan and the nuclear black market now under global scrutiny, has heartened investigators in Europe and the USA because his design is seen as less threatening in terms of the spread of nuclear weapons, The New York Times reported. “If you had to have a design circulating around the world we’d be worse off if it was a design other than Khan’s,” an American weapons expert who is familiar with the Libyan case, told the paper.

However, European and American investigators were quoted as saying they feared Khan and his network might have peddled the weapon blueprints to other nations in deals that have not yet come to light. They also said the Libyan findings gave new credence to what was apparently an attempt by Khan more than a decade ago to sell a nuclear weapon design to Iraq.

Pakistani officials, the Times noted, have focused their recent disclosures on Khan’s illicit spread of equipment to enrich uranium to produce nuclear fuel, and have said little or nothing of the blueprints for a nuclear warhead that went to Libya, which are considered more sensitive. To the “amazement” of inspectors, the blueprints discovered in Libya were wrapped in plastic bags from an Islamabad dry cleaner, the report said. “The Libyans said they got it as a bonus,” an official said of the plans. The centrifuge equipment and warhead designs from Khan’s laboratories in Pakistan were discovered in Libya after the country’s leader, Muammar
Qaddafi, agreed to dismantle his secret nuclear programme, opening it to USA and UN nuclear officials.

Late last month, a 747 aircraft was chartered by the US government for the sole purpose of carrying the small box with the warhead designs from Libya to Dulles airport near Washington. They are now undergoing analysis. American weapons expert were quoted as saying Western analysts, while relieved to find that the blueprint was of Khan’s design, were not overjoyed. “A bad bomb is still a nuke,” he said. “It can still do pretty terrible things to your city.”
— PTI

Colombo, February 9
Sri Lanka’s Tamil rebels today vowed to uphold their truce with government troops despite the dissolution of Parliament but said the snap poll called by the President were a “grave setback” to peace efforts.

The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) said Saturday’s action by President Chandrika Kumaratunga against the government of Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, who was leading the bid to end the three-decade conflict, could further delay the reopening of negotiations.

“The dissolution of Parliament and the call for the snap elections constitutes a grave setback to the peace process,” the LTTE’s London-based chief peace negotiator Anton Balasingham said in a statement.

“In spite of the political turmoil and uncertainty in Colombo, our organisation will rigidly observe the ceasefire regulations and maintain peace,” he said.

The Tigers agreed to a ceasefire with the government of Wickremesinghe in February 2002 and the two sides held six rounds of talks.

The dialogue has been deadlocked since April 2003, but the rebels agreed to resume talks in November after unveiling their first peace plan to end the ethnic bloodshed.

Four days after the Tigers announced their plan, Kumaratunga sacked three ministers and assumed the portfolios of defence, interior and information, accusing the premier of making too many concessions to the rebels.

Meanwhile, diplomats here said the political tug-of-war had put at risk $ 4.5 billion in foreign aid pledged to help rebuild Sri Lanka and support the peace process.
— PTI

A researcher demonstrates a detection test for avian influenza at
a laboratory in Tsukuba city, north of Tokyo,
on Monday. The deadly bird flu virus closed in on China's capital on Monday as the nearby port of Tianjin reported a suspected case and the
WHO said it could not rule out the potential for human infection.
— Reuters photo

Hanoi, February 9
A 27-year-old man has died of bird flu in Vietnam, taking Asia’s toll from the virus to 19, a medical official said today.

The latest victim was from southern Binh Phuoc province. In addition, a 23 year-old man from the Central Highlands has tested positive for the H5N1 strain of the virus but is still alive, the official from the Pasteur Institute in Ho Chi Minh City said.

Fourteen persons have died of the disease in Vietnam while five have died in Thailand. Vietnam already hit by bird flu has detected a lethal outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in one province, a health official said today.

“The disease has hit us very hard,” said the official at the Animal Health Department of the central province of Quang Nam, Hanoi.

She said the disease had killed more than 1,000 cattle and 200 pigs from six districts in the province.

“We will try to save the cattle by injecting vaccines but all infected pigs will be slaughtered and destroyed,” she said.

Quang Nam is the only province in the country that has reported confirmed cases of the disease, the official said.
— Reuters

New York, February 9
The Chinese government has sentenced a highly respected and prominent Tibetan lama to death in a closed trial on charges he was involved in a bombing in a public park, a leading human rights group reported.

In a 108-page report released yesterday, Human Rights Watch said allegations that the monk, Tenzin Delek Rinpoche, 53, financed an April 3, 2002 blast in Chengdu, capital of China’s Sichuan province that injured three persons, were unproven and called for his immediate release.

“In spite of China’s rhetoric about legal reform, Tenzin Delek’s case shows that when it comes to Tibet, the Chinese government still does not tolerate uncontrolled political or religious activity,” said Mickey Spiegel, of Human Rights Watch’s Asian division.

China’s Foreign Ministry had no immediate reaction to a summary of the report yesterday.

At an appeal, Tenzin Delek’s death sentence was suspended for two years, the report said, and if he does not violate the terms of the suspension, the sentence will be commuted to life in prison.
— AP

Washington, February 9
Democratic presidential front-runner John Kerry scored an easy win in Maine to expand his huge lead in the party’s nomination fight. Thus, he kept the heat on President George W. Bush by questioning his justification for war in Iraq.

Mr Kerry, a Massachusetts Senator, rolled up nearly half of the vote in Maine yesterday, with former Vermont Governor Howard Dean finishing a distant second and Ohio Rep. Dennis Kucinich third.

It was the 10th win in 12 contests for Mr Kerry in the race to find a challenger to Mr Bush, and moves him another step closer to the Democratic nomination ahead of tomorrow’s primaries in Tennessee and Virginia and on February 17 in Wisconsin.

The triumph in Maine, which sends 24 delegates to July’s nominating convention, came one day after double-barreled victories for Mr Kerry in Michigan and Washington state. Mr Dean also finished a distant second in those two states.

Mr Kerry appeared to be looking ahead to a November match-up with Mr Bush, calling on the president to set the record straight on the reasons for going to war in Iraq and questioning the details of Mr Bush’s National Guard Service during Vietnam.

During a campaign stop in Virginia, where he was endorsed by Governor Mark Warner, Mr Kerry questioned Mr Bush’s statement on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that he went to war because Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein had “the ability to make weapons” of mass destruction.

“The problem is not just that he is changing his story now — it is that it appears he was telling the American people stories in 2002,” said Mr Kerry, who supported a Congressional resolution authorising the war.

When the decorated Vietnam veteran was asked if he considered Mr Bush absent without leave during his service in the National Guard, Mr Kerry told reporters: “It is a question that’s been raised and that ought to be answered.”
— Reuters

“The Prime Minister has expressed keen interest in the mission giving his go-ahead. He has asked the ministry to provide him with further details, exploring the possible areas of cooperation, appreciating India’s initiative and its recent successes in this field”, a spokesperson for the Ministry of Science and Technology, Michal Ogolnik, said.

Sharon was informed about the Indian proposal asking Israel to join the Chandrayaan-I mission by Science and Technology minister, Eliezer Sandberg, who visited New Delhi in December.

The Israeli finance ministry has also expressed its willingness to allocate funds for the project, the spokesperson said. The finance ministry has written to the space industry and various academic research institutions in Israel to suggest research ideas by March this year, the spokesperson said.

One of the ideas being examined is to launch an Israeli secondary satellite, which will separate from the Indian satellite and circle the moon independently.

Towards this end, Israel is examining the innovative development of a cost-effective satellite engine. Another proposal being mooted is for an Israeli space telescope to circle the moon.
— PTI

BRIEFLY

Explosions kill 29 in coal mineBEIJING: China’s notoriously dangerous coal mining industry has claimed another 29 victims, this time in deliberately set explosions aimed at sealing a deserted mine, state media said on Monday. The bodies of villagers were found in the mine in Shanxi province which was rocked by explosions on Wednesday, Duan Jianguo, deputy secretary-general of the provincial government, was quoted as saying.
— Reuters

5 held over cockle picker deathsLONDON: British police investigating the deaths of 19 migrants, mainly Chinese, who drowned on a beach gathering shellfish on Monday, said they had arrested five persons on suspicion of manslaughter. The five, three men and two women, were arrested on Sunday, three days after the low-wage workers were caught by fast-rising tides as they collected cockles in Morecambe Bay, north-west England.
— Reuters

Forest fire in Nepal kills five
Kathmandu: A fire swept through a forest near a remote, mountainous Nepalese village, leaving at least five women dead and 13 injured, a news report said on Monday. The women were searching for herbs used for traditional medicine, near Narku village in Dolpa district when the forest caught fire, the Kantipur newspaper reported.
— AP

Comfort women’s plea rejected
Tokyo: The high court here on Monday rejected an appeal by seven former comfort women from Taiwan who had sought an official Japanese apology and damages for being forced to provide sex to Japanese soldiers. The group had demanded 70 million yen ($666,000) in damages for their forced sex services to the military preceding and during World War II.
— DPA